Hello, residents. My name is Mike Estefan, and I thank you for joining me today on this month's deep dive episode on the EM Clerkship podcast.

On this episode, we are going to be diving into asthma. But before we begin, just a quick word from our sponsors over at Pearson Rabbits.

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ravits.com. And don't forget to mention EM clerkship when you do. Now, back to the episode.

This episode is structured backwards from how I normally do these deep dives. I'm going to start off

by talking about how to clinically assess a patient presenting with an asthma exacerbation,

meaning the things you should be looking for on exam.

Then I'll quickly run through all of the treatments that we use in the ED for asthma.

After laying down that foundation, then I'll break down how I personally, clinically manage my patients presenting with asthma exacerbations in the ER, and then finally we'll end

by talking about the more advanced topics,

intubating an asthmatic and the concept of permissive hypercapnia.

Okay. First, the clinical assessment of the asthmatic. Some of this is obvious and some of this

is not. But first things first, vital signs are vital.

Look for tachypnea and hypoxemia.

...